BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Romney not backing down, here, grab audio sound bite 16. This is a new TV ad from the Romney campaign. It's titled "No Evidence." ROMNEY: I'm Mitt Romney, and I approve this message. ANNOUNCER: When a president doesn't tell the truth, how can we trust him to lead? The Obama outsourcing attacks, misleading, unfair, and untrue. There was no evidence that Mitt Romney shipped jobs overseas. Candidate Obama lied about Hillary Clinton. HILLARY: So shame on you, Barack Obama. ANNOUNCER: But America expects more from a president. Obama's dishonest campaign, another reason America has lost confidence in...

OVERVIEW Despite the stagnant economy and broad dissatisfaction with national conditions, Barack Obama holds a significant lead over Mitt Romney. Currently, Obama is favored by a 50% to 43% margin among registered voters nationwide. Obama has led by at least a slim margin in every poll this year, and there is no clear trend in either candidate’s support since Romney wrapped up the GOP nomination. The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted June 28-July 9, 2012 among 2,973 adults, including 2,373 registered voters, finds that Romney has not seized the advantage...

Has anyone noticed that Rasmussen has Romney winning or ahead in the 7 Toss Up States? If you scroll over each of the states it looks like a uphill battle for Obama. http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/archive/2012_electoral_college_scoreboard

Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson announced his intention on Friday to give $10 million to political action committees controlled by Charles and David Koch who in turn are themselves giving substantial sums to unseat President Obama and turn control of the Senate back to the Republican Party. Adelson's intentions are to give upwards of $100 million in support of conservative causes. He explained: What scares me is the continuation of the socialist-style economy we've been experiencing for almost four years. That scares me because the redistribution of wealth is the path to more socialism, and to more of the...

Assuming Romney is the projected nominee, he will need a VP that will please the GOP,Tea Party & Conservative Base. Most of us want Marco Rubio, but he still hasn't shown any serious interest. That leaves McDonnell&Ryan next in line. Either one will give Romney a boost against Obama. Virgina&North Carolina being crucial would be the reason to choose McDonnell. Wisconsin & the rust belt would be the factor with Paul Ryan. It's a tough decision. There are a few others, but if there was a poll, Ryan would probably be the choice if Rubio bowed out.

Only twelve states have held primaries or caucuses, and shockingly, many of them have either been scandal ridden, had their dates manipulated in violation of proposed nomination calendar, or broke the delegate distribution rules set by the Republican National Committee. State GOP chairs in Iowa and Nevada have resigned in disgrace, and others have come under heavy scrutiny following the completion of their caucus or primary. The Iowa Caucuses became the butt of too many jokes when Iowa GOP Chairman refused to declare Rick Santorum the winner of the caucuses following the state GOP’s certification process, which clearly showed Santorum...

TROY, Mich. — Employing a trick they used during the hotly contested Florida primary, the Romney campaign is deploying surrogates to Sen. Rick Santorum’s campaign events. At least two surrogates — former Michigan State Rep. Rocky Raczkowski and current State Rep. Aric Nesbitt from Kalamazoo — will be attending Santorum events throughout the state in the days leading up to the Michigan primary on Tuesday, a campaign official told ABC News. Other surrogates attended Santorum events held earlier in the week. Nesbitt was spotted at Santorum’s event this morning in St. Clair Shores. Rep. Connie Mack, R-Fla., and Rep. Jason...

Thanks to some remarkable reporting from Big Hollywood, it has become increasingly clear the upcoming HBO movie "Game Change" is less a political melodrama than an all-out attempt to destroy the person and reputation of Sarah Palin. The movie is based on a poorly researched book by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, and it was criticized at the time of its publication by Howard Kurtz, then a media reporter for the Washington Post, and the New York Times for its overreliance on unsourced "deep background" interviews that were difficult to verify. Two of those sources have been revealed, according to...

John Hinderaker encapsulates an assumption which has started to take hold among many of Mitt Romney’s backers: that the fault for what appears to be an increasingly likely 2012 election loss lies with conservatives for making this a real primary. Speaking of the see-saw of not-Romney candidates, he writes: The same pattern has been repeated more than once during the current, discouraging presidential nominating process. If the GOP loses this year’s presidential contest, the party will have no one to blame but its own activists. I'm hearing this meme repeated by many increasingly dejected Romney supporters around Washington, D.C. See,...

Back in the thick of the 2008 Republican presidential race, I asked a captain of American finance what he had made of Mitt Romney when they were young colleagues at Bain & Company. “Mitt was a nice guy, a smart businessman, and an excellent team player,” he ­responded without missing a beat. Then came the CEO’s one footnote, delivered with bemusement, not pique: “Still, whenever the rest of us would go out at the end of the day, we’d always find ourselves having the same conversation: None of us had any idea who this guy was.” Here we are in...

Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney's struggles in Michigan are fueling speculation that Republicans might have to resort to a doomsday scenario and launch a frantic search for a 2012 savior at their nominating convention in late August. Rare in the modern age of U.S. politics, a "brokered convention" could result in Republicans ditching their current crop of candidates and turning to someone else who they feel would have a better chance of defeating Democratic President Barack Obama in the November 6 election. How did Republicans get to this point? Romney's failure to get conservatives fully behind him and put down yet...

[Big SNIP] ....If Romney can't win, he'll be certain that the person who beat him is so damaged, so beaten up by his negative campaign ads that they will have no chance against Obama. Unfortunately for Republicans, it creates a lose-lose situation. Mitt Romney cannot defeat Obama. His flipping and flopping is well documented and will be highlighted by the Obama campaign as the signature of one with a lack of character. He is such a poor speaker in interviews that he attempted to appeal to the middle class by trying to bet Rick Perry $10,000 and later saying that,...

“We have to look at the root cause of why the economy is struggling as much as it is,” Santorum said. “Government intervention. Government regulation. Government taxation. Government is crushing and destroying the American spirit and the American free enterprise system.” Santorum said that government spending was impinging on personal freedoms and ultimately chipping away at what made the country great. “When the government gets as big as it’s gotten and starts to take over more of your life, then you get smaller as the individual, you get weaker, you lose control over your lives. You lose the rights that...

KENTWOOD – Jerome Bush, an 81-year-old lifelong Republican, shook GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s hand Wednesday, recalling doing the same with his father, George Romney, during his campaign for governor more than 40 years ago. “I voted for his dad,” said Bush, the former supervisor of Fillmore Township in Allegan County. “Right now, I’m still undecided if I’m going to vote for him.” It illustrates the difficulty the former Massachusetts governor is facing on the 2012 campaign trail. Three polls released Wednesday show Rick Santorum ahead of Romney in the state where he was born and raised, a place once...

By a more than two to one margin, Americans say that the more they learn about Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney, the more they dislike him, per a new Washington Post / ABC poll: Overall, 55 percent of those who are closely following the campaign say they disapprove of what the GOP candidates have been saying. By better than 2 to 1, Americans say the more they learn about Romney, the less they like him. Even among Republicans, as many offer negative as positive assessments of him on this question. Judgments about former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who denounced Romney...

In some of his harshest words yet, Newt Gingrich explained Friday why he didn't call rival Mitt Romney after the former Massachusetts pulled a decisive Florida primary victory earlier in the week. Pointing to Romney's post-South Carolina campaign strategy, which turned noticeably negative against the former House speaker, Gingrich said Romney didn't earn any kudos. "They outspent me five to one to quote destroy Newt Gingrich?" Gingrich said in an interview on CNN's "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer." "You know, I think that doesn't deserve congratulations. I think that's reprehensible, I think it's dishonest, and I think it's shameful."...

It’s easy to collect Mitt Romney's "rich" remarks into a highlight reel. Have a few laughs. Sure, we ask, what's the guy thinking? We note that presidential races require your A-game. But then it's tempting to shrug. And say he's still on track to win the GOP nomination. That the general election will turn on the economy. Oh, those silly pundits. How they do obsess over every sound bite. But listen to Rush Limbaugh on Romney: “He comes across as the prototypical rich Republican.” And one begins to hear why Romney’s gaffes are no joke. It’s commonly said that this...